Saturday, January 23, 2010

Maelee (aka "Maelee Bug") celebrated her second birthday with a Dora party at Burger King! Maelee is the adorable daughter of Kandiss and Anthony, two very dear friends. We were honored to have been invited to share this special day with the little "princess" and I was thrilled to be able to make her birthday cake. This cake was bright, colorful, and lots of fun to make. The only downside was that the Dora theme song ran through my head the entire time I was working on it! D-d-d-d-d-Dora! D-d-d-d-d-d-Dora! (Are you singing it now, too?)

I am very lucky to be able to work with an amazing group of people. The staff at Appling County Elementary School is top-notch for many, many different reasons. One of the special people that I am so fortunate to work with is our school counselor, Melody. Hands down, she is the absolute nicest person I have ever met...seriously...days at an elementary school can be very stressful, but I don't think I've ever seen her without a smile on her face. On top of being super sweet, she is also smart, funny, and too pretty for words! I'm sure that her husband, Lee knows exactly how lucky he is!Melody (being the thoughtful person that she is) wanted to surprise Lee with a cake for his birthday...I hope he likes his surprise!

Saturday, January 16, 2010

M.E. is the daughter of Eva and Shannon. I've known those two for as long as I can remember and it has been a joy to see their little one grow to be such a cute and sassy little girl. When Eva first asked me about doing M.E.'s cake, we had an idea to do a princess cake. Miss M.E. had other plans and she wanted a castle cake. I was happy to oblige.

M.E.: I hope you had a wonderful birthday! Next time, please invite me to go to Disney World with you! :)

It's always great when I take a cake order for a new customer, but there's something extra special about repeat customers...Tomorrow Slater will celebrate his birthday with a "camping" party. Slater's family is no stranger to emiecakes...in fact, some of my favorite cakes have been made for this special family. Remember Madelyn's pink crown cake? Mykelyn's precious girly cake? The "Belly" cake?

Sarah called to order a cake for her daughter, Erica's twelfth birthday. I've never met Sarah, but I know Erica and she is a very special and beautiful young lady. I hope her day was special and that she enjoyed her cake. I certainly had fun making it!

The Christmas season was definitely a busy season for emiecakes. I really enjoyed baking and decorating cakes and cupcakes that I new would be a part of families' Christmas celebrations.

Even though every order I filled was special, one holiday order definitely stands out...

My grandfather, aka "Pa", aka "Sheriff" ordered cakes for all of the fabulous people he works with at the sheriff's office. In fact, he ordered a cake for EACH of them...60 cakes in all! Yep, that's right...I said 6-0! When he first approached me with the order, I wasn't sure if I could do it, but after my fabulous assistant (my mom) agreed to help, I knew that emiecakes could pull it off.

We began our planning session by making a grocery list. I wish that I'd saved the list so that I could quote it for you and make your jaw drop, but I don't have it anymore. I will tell you that it included 180 eggs, 5 gallons of milk, and more butter than Wal-Mart carries at any given time.

I have to thank my mom and my grandmother, aka "Ma" for chipping in and helping me to gather all the supplies. (And for letting me use their refrigerators for storage!)

We decided that we would start baking on Saturday and see how far we could get. Here's what the scene looked like before we got started.Before you think I'm completely nuts, let me tell you that these cakes weren't decorated cakes. I don't think I could have tackled the task of decorating 60 cakes! We did four types of "old fashioned" cakes: red velvet, coconut, chocolate, and carrot.

We baked and baked and baked! Each cake had 3 layers so there were 180 layers in all...there were cake layers EVERYWHERE!!!

At the end of the first baking day, we completed 28 cakes!

The next morning, we started bright and early and were determined to finish before the sun went down. We tweaked our system and finally finished all 60! That's 60 cakes in two days!!! As you can imagine, taking pictures was the last thing on my mind. However, I did grab my camera to capture the HUGE mess that my mom made! (It's very amusing to me because I am usually the one to do things like this!) I'm not sure exactly what happened...

This was definitely an experience and an achievement for emiecakes! Thanks again to my Mama...I love you!